agon.
(Greek, “contest” or “conflict”). In both COMEDY and TRAGEDY produced in classical Greece, it represents the external or inner conflict that leads up to the turning point in the play.
amphibrach.
(Greek, “short at each end”). A metrical FOOT consisting of a stressed syllable surrounded by two unstressed syllables ( ). Words that are amphibrachic include alluring, deliver, and commotion. It is often found in the LIMERICK.
anapest
(Greek, “beaten back”). A metrical FOOT consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable ( ). In English, anapestic METER often starts galloping and is hard to restrain, and it’s unusual to find a poem entirely in anapestic feet. Byron’s “Destruction of Sennacherib” is a well-known poem in anapestic tetrameter (however, the –ian of Assyrian must be elided into one syllable):
anaphora
A figure of repetition, wherein words or phrases are repeated at the beginning of successive verses or clauses. Here’s an example from Keats’ “Isabella
anastrophe.
The inversion of natural word order, as in George Peele’s “His Golden lockes, Time hath to Silver turn’d,” which begins with the direct object; the natural order would be “Time hath turn’d his Golden lockes to Silver,” which would change the METER and lose the rhyme—serious defects in a poem written to be set to music.
angst.
(German, “anxiety” or “anguish”). The anxiety-neurosis of the years following the Second World War expressed in the works of such writers as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.
